Abstract

This study examined how risk assessment policies are in practice being decided and operationalised at Codex and in five countries: the USA, the UK, Germany, Japan and Argentina. Our starting assumption was that, where public policy-making institutions formally take responsibility for risk appraisal and decision-making, some risk assessment policy assumptions arise, even if they are not explicitly acknowledged or labelled in those terms. We found that the choice was not between having a risk assessment policy and not having one, but between being explicit and transparent about RAP judgements, or being implicit and opaque.